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Samuel Pepys (pronounced 'peeps') was a 17th Century English civil servant who is famous for keeping a remarkably frank daily Diary between 1 January 1660 and 31 May 1669. (This was perhaps not as dangerous as it sounds, as the diary was written in a form of short hand most people could not read, later mistaken for a deliberate code.) The diary is an exhaustive record of everything he thought noteworthy, from important historical events like the Great Fire of London, to the plays he watched, meals he ate, and other people's wives he slept with.

Pepys' diary for this day in history, preserved as a blog, is available here.

Belligerent Sexual Tension: Pepys's wife Elizabeth is, understandably, outraged when she catches him groping their maid, and the diary records many epic fights — but Pepys also notes that they have pretty awesome makeup sex.

Brutal Honesty: Of of the diary's most salient features is Pepys' honesty about everything, from cheating on his wife to accepting kickbacks from contractors.

Catch Phrase: Pepys has a hyperbolic habit of marking especially outstanding things and events with snowclones in the general form of "the most (adjective) (noun) that ever I (saw, heard, encountered, etc.) in my life". See It Will Never Catch On, below.

See also the very top and bottom of this page.

Gallows Humor: "I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition."

Have a Gay Old Time: In a February 1664 entry, Pepys writes: "our little girl Susan is a most admirable Slut and pleases us mightily, doing more service than both the others and deserves wages better." The word "slut" in those days meant (among other things) "kitchen maid" and while Pepys did have affairs with maids, here he only meant that Susan is a good maid.

It Will Never Catch On: It can be seen that Shakespeare's reputation wasn't quite as good yet in Pepys's as it is today — and it probably didn't help that, during Pepys's time, the plays were very rarely presented in their original format, having much extraneous material added on. He called A Midsummer Night's Dream "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life", Romeo and Juliet "a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life" and Twelfth Night "one of the weakest plays that I ever saw on the stage"; he did not like Henry IV Part 1 either, although he chalked most of that up to having brought the book in order to follow along.

He liked Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth, however. (Particularly Macbeth, which he records seeing eight times within a space of four years.)

Kavorka Man: Pepys himself. Despite his regular dalliances with tavern wenches and frequent groping of his wife's maids, he even made one of his subordinates pimp out his wife to him in return for a promotion. Ironically, he also suspected his wife of cheating on him as well, and was horrified on hearing a rumour that his recently deceased brother might have fathered an illegitimate child on his housemaid.

Not So Different: "I went, and Mr. Mansell and one of the King's footmen, with a dog that the King loved, which shit in the boat, which made us laugh and me think that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are."

Potty Failure: September 28, 1665: Pepys was staying at an inn and woke during the night with a bad bout of diarrhea. The maid had forgotten to leave a chamberpot in his room and he couldn't make it down to the privy, so he had to use the fireplace. Twice.

October 20, 1660: Pepys discovers that the cistern of his neighbor's outhouse is full when he goes down to his own cellar, steps in "a great heap of turds", and finds it leaking through the wall.

Elizabeth has at one point some long-standing bowel problem, meaning that at one point she has to 'do her business' in the street while out for a walk. It was that kind of era.

Your Cheating Heart: Pepys was unbelievably unfaithful towards his wife Elizabeth, and at the same time suspected her of cheating on him with a dancing instructor.

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